Vanorion IncarnateChapter 1: Awakening
Life was cold.
Mine was strange, to say the least.
I awoke suspended in a tube filled with green liquid, my body submerged in a substance that was neither warm nor entirely freezing. I could move, though. My limbs responded when I willed them to, and I could feel the faint pressure of a breathing tube against my face and another inserted into my abdomen.
Beyond the glass that imprisoned me lay a room of metal and machinery. It was modest in size, its sterile walls illuminated by the pale glow of countless screens. Servers hummed in the background, their constant whirring accompanied by the steady beeping of a heart monitor.
I found the sounds comforting.
I didn't know why.
There was nothing in my mind to explain the feeling, no memory to associate with the machines or the room. Yet I could observe, process, and understand. My thoughts existed without a past to anchor them.
I raised my hand.
The movement came naturally, almost instinctively, as I extended my palm and pressed it against the inner surface of the glass.
It was smooth. Sturdy. Cold.
Safe, somehow.
The moment my skin made contact with the surface, the screens beside the tube flickered to life. Lines of information streamed across them as a signal was transmitted through the machinery surrounding me.
I watched the display change.
Then I noticed someone approaching.
She was the first living being I had ever seen.
A young woman, perhaps in her twenties, stood on the other side of the glass. She wore a white lab coat, and her brown hair fell loosely around a face marked by strange patterns I couldn't identify. Her eyes were entirely white, their appearance almost ethereal beneath the laboratory lights.
She stopped when she noticed me watching her.
For several seconds, neither of us moved.
Then her expression changed.
Surprise gave way to disbelief. Her breathing quickened, and her eyes darted between me and the screens displaying the results of whatever process had brought me into existence.
Her emotions seemed to intensify with every passing second.
I watched as her brown hair gradually faded to grey, then to a brilliant white. Two horns emerged from her head, pushing through the changing strands as though the transformation were the most natural thing in the world.
She barely seemed to notice.
Instead, she hurried toward the control panel, her hands moving rapidly as she examined the automated reports generated by my incubator.
She was ecstatic.
I didn't understand why, but I could recognize the emotion. Something about my awakening had exceeded her expectations, perhaps even defied them.
She was looking at me as though I had accomplished something extraordinary simply by opening my eyes.
The green liquid began to drain.
I felt the fluid recede around my body, leaving my skin exposed to the air inside the chamber. The breathing apparatus disconnected, followed by the tube in my abdomen. I barely had time to process the unfamiliar sensations before the liquid had emptied completely.
A metallic hiss sounded.
The chamber opened.
For the first time, my feet touched something solid.
A grated metal floor pressed against my soles. I wavered, instinctively shifting my weight until I found my balance. The air entered my lungs without assistance, cold and sterile. I coughed, my body struggling to accommodate the unfamiliar sensation, then gradually adjusted.
I was breathing.
On my own.
I looked down at my hands and flexed my fingers. Each movement was accompanied by a corresponding sensation, and I could distinguish the tension in my muscles from the movement of my joints.
I understood what my body was doing.
What I couldn't understand was how.
I took a step.
Then another.
Walking should have been difficult. I had spent my entire existence suspended inside a tube, yet my legs carried me forward with surprising coordination. My movements were awkward only for a moment before my body began correcting itself.
I looked toward the woman.
She was smiling.
"Ah, you're wondering how you can walk already?" she asked, her voice bright with excitement. "I strengthened your muscles and installed the basic behavioural patterns you would need. Balance, coordination, simple movement. Things like that."
She crouched slightly, bringing herself closer to my eye level.
"And just by looking at you, I can tell the language integration worked. You understand what I'm saying, don't you?"
I stared at her.
Her words made sense.
Not merely the sounds themselves, but their meaning. I understood the individual words, the sentences they formed, and the intention behind her questions.
I could speak, too. I knew how to form words, how to arrange them into sentences, and how to communicate an idea.
I had never learned any of it.
At least, I had no memory of doing so.
My mind felt like an empty room furnished by someone I had never met. There was no recollection of a childhood, no familiar face, no name I could call my own. Yet beneath that emptiness lay an entire foundation of knowledge.
Gravity. Language. Balance. Basic reasoning.
I understood how to recall information and how to process what I observed. Every moment seemed to settle into my mind with perfect clarity, each detail preserved rather than fading into the background.
I could remember the screens changing when I touched the glass. I could remember the colour of the liquid, the sound of the machines, and the precise sequence of the woman's movements.
Nothing escaped me.
Had she made me this way?
The woman seemed to notice the questions forming behind my eyes.
"You understand, don't you?" she murmured, her smile softening. "You're my creation."
She paused, looking me over with an expression that was difficult to interpret.
"My son."
The words hung between us.
For the first time since awakening, something inside me hesitated. I understood what a son was in the most basic sense, but the concept felt strangely incomplete. It was a relationship without a memory, a connection I could define but had never experienced.
The woman didn't seem troubled by my silence.
"I'm so happy you're alive," she continued. "And responsive, too. After everything it took to bring you here, I was beginning to wonder whether you'd ever wake up."
I looked at her.
"Alive?"
The word escaped me before I could consider it further.
She blinked.
I glanced down at my hands, then back at her.
"Who am I?"
My voice sounded unfamiliar, even to me.
"What is my purpose, Creator?"
The woman went still.
Perhaps she hadn't expected the question. Perhaps she had simply forgotten that, despite everything she had given me, I had no idea who I was.
She studied my face for a moment before her expression softened again.
"Your name," she said thoughtfully. "I'll call you Arc."
She smiled.
"And Aku, as a nickname."
Arc.
Aku.
I repeated the names silently, committing both to memory. They were the first things I had been given that felt as though they belonged to me.
Then I remembered my other question.
"And my purpose?"
Her smile remained, but something in her expression changed.
She rose to her full height, looking down at me with those impossible white eyes.
"You're a vessel."
I waited.
She offered no further explanation.